Contributions published at Macroeconomics and Labor Markets (Josef Zweimüller)

This thesis sheds empirical light on three research questions which belong to the realm of applied labor economics: What is the effect of early retirement on retirees’ mortality? How does an employment quota affect firms’ demand for disabled workers? And why are fluctuations in workplace accidents pro-cyclical? Chapter 2 shows that, for some groups of workers, early retirement increases the probability of premature death. Moreover, the driving force seems to be changed in health-related behavior, such as excessive alcohol consumption and smoking. The results in chapter 3 suggest that an employment quota is favorable to firms’ demand for disabled workers. In addition, chapter 4 finds that a rise in the tax, to which firms that do not comply with the employment quota are subject, also boosts this demand. Chapter 5 provides evidence that the pro-cyclicality of workplace accidents is governed by workers’ reporting behavior. Zusammenfassung Diese Dissertation untersucht empirisch drei Forschungsfragen, welche in das Gebiet der angewandten Arbeitsmarktökonomik fallen: Was ist der Effekt von Frühpension auf die Sterblichkeit von Rentnern? Inwiefern beeinflusst eine Quotenregelung die Nachfrage von Firmen nach Menschen mit Behinderung? Und warum sind Fluktuationen in der Rate von Arbeitsunfällen prozyklisch? Kapitel 2 zeigt auf, dass Frühpension bei gewissen Individuen die Wahrscheinlichkeit eines frühzeitigen Todes erhöht. Darüber hinaus wird gezeigt, dass die Ursache dafür in gesundheitsbezogenen Verhaltensänderungen liegt, wie z.B. exzessiver Alkoholkonsum und Rauchen. Die Resultate in Kapitel 3 deuten darauf hin, dass eine Quotenregelung sich günstig auf die Nachfrage von Firmen nach behinderten Arbeitnehmern auswirkt. Weiter zeigt Kapitel 4, dass eine Erhöhung der Ausgleichstaxe im Zusammenhang mit einer Quotenregelung ebenfalls die Nachfrage von Firmen nach Menschen mit Behinderung steigert. Kapitel 5 zeigt Evidenz dafür, dass die Prozyklizität von Arbeitsunfällen durch das Meldeverhalten von Arbeitern bestimmt wird.

This paper studies the effect of a large-scale policy change in the Austrian disability insurance program, which tightened eligibility criteria for men above a certain age. Using administrative data on the universe of Austrian private-sector employees, the results of difference-in-difference regressions suggest a substantial and statistically significant decline in disability enrollment of 6 to 7.4 percentage points and an increase in employment of 1.6 to 3.4 percentage points. The policy change had important spillover effects into the unemployment and sickness insurance program. Specifically, the share of individuals receiving unemployment benefits increased by 3.5 to 3.9 percentage points, and the share receiving sickness insurance benefits, by roughly 0.7 percentage points.

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Recent immigrants in Switzerland are overrepresented at the top of the wage distribution in high and at the bottom in low skill occupations. Basic economic theory thus suggests that immigration has led to a compression of the wage distribution in the former group and to an expansion in the latter. The data confirm this proposition for high skill occupations, but reveal effects close to zero for low skill occupations. While the estimated wage effects are of considerable magnitude at the tails of the wage distribution in high skill occupations, the effects on overall inequality are shown to be negligible.

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We estimate the effects of labor market entry conditions on wages for male individuals first entering the Austrian labor market between 1978 and 2000. We find a large negativ effect of unfavorable entry conditions on starting wages as well as a sizeable negative long-run effect. Specifically, we estimate that a one percentage point increase in the initial local unemployment rate is associated with an approximate shortfall in lifetime earnings of 6.5%. We also show that bad entry conditions are associated with lower quality of a worker's first job and that initial wage shortfalls associated with bad entry conditions only partially evaporate upon involuntary job change. These and additional findings support the view that initial job assignment, in combination with accumulation of occupation or industry-specific human capital while on this first job, plays a key role in generating the observed wage persistencies.

This paper develops basic algebraic concepts for instrumental variables (IV) regressions which are used to derive the leverage and influence of observations on the 2SLS estimate and compute alternative heteroskedasticity-consistent (HC1, HC2 and HC3) estimators for the 2SLS covariance matrix in a finite-sample context. Monte Carlo simulations and applications to growth regressions are used to evaluate the performance of these estimators. The results support the use of HC3 instead of White’s robust standard errors in small and unbalanced data sets. The leverage and influence of observations can be examined with the various measures derived in the paper

This paper describes individuals' perceptions and normative valuations of executive compensation using comparable survey data for fifteen OECD member countries. An overwhelming majority of individuals (more than 90%) believes that top executives earn more than they actually deserve. However, there is also substantial variation in the actual and ethical levels of executive compensation, both within and across countries. The empirical analysis further shows that subjective estimates of executive pay are associated with objective measures of inequality and redistribution, and that individuals' perceptions and normative valuations of executive compensation are associated with their more general political preferences.

The empirical literature on the relationship between inequality and growth offers a contradictory assessment: Estimators based on time-series (differences-based) variation indicate a strong positive link while estimators (also) exploiting the cross-sectional (levelbased) variation suggest a negative relationship. Using an expanded dataset, the presentnpaper confirms this conflicting pattern — and reconciles it on the basis of a simple model.nWe argue that the differences-based methods are prone to reflect the mostly positive shortor medium-run implications of inequality while the level-based estimators also incorporate more negative long-term consequences. Thus, the latter estimates come close to reflecting the adverse overall impact of inequality in the long run.

We estimate the causal effect of early retirement on mortality for blue-collar workers. To overcome the problem of endogenous selection, we exploit an exogenous change in unemployment insurance rules in Austria that allowed workers in eligible regions to withdraw from the workforce up to 3.5 years earlier than those in non-eligible regions. For males, instrumental-variable estimates show a significant 2.4 percentage points (about 13%) increase in the probability of dying before age 67. We do not find any adverse effect of early retirement on mortality for females. Death causes indicate a significantly higher incidence of cardiovascular disorders among eligible workers, suggesting that changes in health-related behavior explain increased mortality among male early retirees.

We investigate whether the costs of job displacement differ between blue and white collar workers. In the short-run earnings and employment losses are substantial for both groups but stronger for white collars. In the long run, there are only weak effects for blue collar workers but strong and persistent effects for white collars.

"We study international trade in a model where consumers have non-homothetic preferences and where household income restricts the extensive margin of consumption. In equilibrium, monopolistic producers set high (low) prices in rich (poor) countries but a threat of parallel trade restricts the scope of price discrimination between countries. The threat of parallel trade allows differences in per capita incomes to have a strong impact on the extensive margin of trade, whereas differences in population sizes have a weaker effect. We also show that the welfare gains from trade liberalization are biased towards rich countries. We extend our model to more than two countries; to unequal incomes within countries; and to more general specifications of non-homothetic preferences. Our basic results are robust to these extensions."

This paper describes subjective wage inequality and the demand for redistribution in Austria using individuals’ estimates of occupational wages from the International Social Survey Program. Although these estimates differ widely across individuals, the data clearly show that most individuals would like to decrease wage inequality, relative to the level of inequality which they perceive to exist. The empirical analysis also shows that the demand for redistribution is strongly associated not only with variables describing self-interested motives for redistribution, but also with perceptions of and social norms with respect to inequality. Further, the demand for redistribution is a strong predictor for whether an individual is supportive of redistribution by the state. On the other hand, however, I find almost no evidence for an empirical association between the demand for redistribution and individuals’ party identification.

We study a model of endogenous growth where firms invest both in product and process innovations. Product innovations (that open up completely new product lines) satisfy the advanced wants of the rich. Subsequent process innovations (that decrease costs per unit of quality) transform the luxurious products of the rich into conveniences of the poor. A prototypical example for such a product cycle is the automobile. Initially an exclusive product for the very rich, the automobile became affordable to the middle class after the introduction of Ford's Model T, the car that 'put America on wheels'. We show that an egalitarian society creates strong incentives for process innovations (such as the Model T) whereas an unequal society creates strong incentives for product innovations (new luxuries). We show that the inequality-growth relationship depends on which type ofninnovative activity drives technical progress, analyzing both the characteristics of and the transition to the balanced growth path.

We study the short-run effect of involuntary job loss on comprehensive measures of public health costs. We focus on job loss induced by plant closure, thereby addressing the reverse causality problem as job displacements due to plant closure are unlikely caused by workers' health status, but potentially have important effects on individual workers' health and associated public health costs. Our empirical analysis is based on a rich data set from Austria providing comprehensive information on various types of health care costs and day-by-day work history at the individual level. Our central findings are: (i) overall expenditures on medical treatments are not strongly affected by job displacement; (ii) job loss significantly increases expenditures for antidepressants and related drugs, as well as for hospitalizations due to mental health problems for men (but not for women) although the effects are economically rather small; and (iii) sickness benefits strongly increase due to job loss.

We study the long-run effects of initial labor market conditions on wages for a large sample of male individuals entering the Austrian labor market between 1978 and 2000. We find a robust negative effect of unfavorable entry conditions on starting wages. This initial effect turns out to be quite persistent and even though wages do catch up later on, large effects on lifetime earnings result. We also show that initial labor market conditions have smaller and less persistent effects for blue-collar workers than for white-collar workers. We further show that some of the long-run adjustment takes place through changes in job-mobility and employment patterns as well as in job tenure. Finally, we find that adjustments at the aggregate level are key to explain wages' adjustment process in the longer run.

This paper explores the labor supply effects of a large-scale policy change in the Austrian disability insurance program, which tightened eligibility criteria for men above a certain age. Using administrative data on the universe of Austrian private-sector employees, the results of difference-in-difference type regressions suggest a substantial and statistically significant decline in disability enrollment of 5-5.7 percentage points and a modest increase in employment of 1.4 to 2.7 percentage points. On the other hand, the policy change had important spillover effects into the unemployment and sickness insurance program. Specifically, the share of individuals receiving unemployment benefits increased roughly by 3 percentage points and the share receiving sickness insurance benefits by 0.6 percentage points.

This paper describes subjective wage inequality and the demand for redistribution in Austrianusing individuals' estimates of occupational wages from the International Social SurveynProgram. Although these estimates differ widely across individuals, the data clearly show that most individuals would like to decrease wage inequality, relative to the level of inequality which they perceive to exist. The empirical analysis also shows that the demand for redistribution is strongly associated not only with variables describing self-interested motives for redistribution, but also with perceptions of and social norms with respect to inequality. Further, the demand for redistribution is a strong predictor for whether annindividual is supportive of redistribution by the state. On the other hand, however, I find almost no evidence for an empirical association between the demand for redistribution and individuals' party identification.